The First Rebel
by Linquist
Summary: The 75th Hunger Games are announced. To prove the powerlessness of even the beloved victors, the Tributes are chosen from the families of previous victors. Panem is prepared to grieve the loss of Primrose Everdeen. The Rebellion is posed to use it. But there was a victor before Haymitch and her daughter will make a choice no one is prepared for.


Haymitch was drinking before the first shot of Katniss (_ a goddamn child _) in her wedding dress and he knew what was coming before Panem's anthem even began to play. If he had ever listened to Effie's advice and if he had ever visited that Capitol shrink, he wouldn't have been sitting alone, surrounded by his garbage, and waiting for the announcement he didn't really need to hear.

Actually, several things about this scene would have probably been different.

Maybe if he had just cracked open a bottle a couple hours earlier he wouldn't have been conscious for the second reading of the cards in his lifetime. The worst part of everything was how little Haymitch actually remembered the last one. He wasn't sure if that particular memory had been clouded by liquor or if it was just that he had been arrogant enough to never seriously believe his name would have been drawn.

Back then he had a girl and a family. This time he knew he wasn't going to forget.

When it became clear that it really is the reading of the cards, Haymitch didn't need to hear Snow's historical jacking off about the lessons of the previous quells. In truth, he didn't need to hear the card itself and certainly not the moralizations of it. He had guessed it from the moment they had stepped off the train to see Prim Everdeen sitting on Gale Hawthorne's shoulders.

Snow takes the envelope from the little boy in the crisp white suit and carefully opens it.

"On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from the relatives of previous victors."

Sometimes with the Capitol it is a mining accident and a collapsed block. Sometimes it is the Games. But there are always consequences and Snow makes sure that you are alive to see it. You don't have to kill someone; not so long as you scrape out everything inside of them. Take out the passion, the spark, the life, and leave them there as a shell with alcohol and morphling.

The first person to make it to his house was Peeta. This didn't really surprise Haymitch, as he was sure Katniss was dealing with either her sister's meltdown or her own.

Haymitch didn't think it was his drink that made Peeta seem so shell shocked. He fell into the chair across from him (having first to knock away a pile of trash which had already taken up residence) and sat there with a dumbstruck look on his face.

"Well, Peeta, at least this time it doesn't have to be about you, huh?" He slurred, not caring if he was either unclear or causing offense.

"Why Katniss?" Peeta asked, voicing straining. "Why not come after me too? Where are they going to even get a boy tribute? No one in my family is eligible for reaping."

"You weren't the one to hold out the berries boy," he grumbles, feeling his anger rise. _And we all knew the only fight you cared about was Katniss. _"And aren't you forgetting something? Katniss has a cousin."

Confusion clouded Peeta's eyes and knit his brow. "Wait, _Gale _? But they're not even really cousins! And he isn't even of reaping age."

Haymitch scowled and tried to remind himself that it wasn't Peeta that he hated. After a few more swigs of the bottle, he slammed it down. "Gale's got a kid brother, doesn't he?"

Peeta looked more horrified in the dark of his disgusting dining room than Haymitch had ever seen him in the horror of his own games. To be honest, he was half expecting that to be the end of it. He was contemplating whether he would take his bottle to his bed before or after Peeta finally got up to leave.

Before he made up his mind, a rapid knock sounded at his door. For a split second, his drink-addled mind thought he was somewhere else; some other horrible night in the same chair, where it wouldn't be Katniss on the other side of his door.

How many years had it been? How many since he thought of her?

It was Peeta who finally collected himself enough to open the door.

It was Katniss and it was not those other nights. Peeta said something to her which neither of them seemed to hear. When she stepped into the room, Katniss's face was deathly pale and as gray as her eyes. Her expression contained a manic composure Haymitch had never seen her wear before.

"There was another victor," she demands, slamming her hands down on the table. The force knocks the bottle off the table and no one notices the sound of the glass shattering on the floor.

_I know _, Haymitch thinks and he vaguely registers the stinging on his leg. He suspects it isn't white liquor dripping down his ankle.

"There was another victor," Katniss pleads this time. "My mother said she had a daughter, a family."

Idly, Haymitch wonders if Katniss realizes what she is begging for. If in a few days, when the horror had lost the edge of its immediacy, she would feel regret for it. Haymitch doubted it. Maybe if it had been anyone else but Prim.

"Yeah, my mentor had a kid." His voice was hoarse and he hoped it sounded like his normal gruffness. "Girl got knocked up at 16. It was probably the only thing that kept her out of the games and the Capitol didn't like that. Addelise got left to raise the girl after the accident. She's still running around somewhere in Twelve last I heard."

"Is she eligible for Reaping?" Peeta finally breaks in, both hopeful and full of shame.

"Should be, yeah," he said, wishing his liquor was in his hand and not mixing with his blood on the floor. "But if you think it's her name that's gonna be drawn, you're both idiots."

Katniss slumped into the chair Peeta had abandoned, face collapsed in her arms. Peeta hesitated, hand fluttering over her shoulder, but he eventually caved and allowed his hand to rub circles over her back.

"We've got time. We'll train them. We'll make them into careers. We can win this," Peeta tried to reassure her.

Haymitch didn't feel the need to point out there was no way the Capitol was going to let two tributes come home this time. He wanted to tell them a lot more than that, but they were kids. Hadn't Katniss already shown she wasn't ready, no matter what she said?

He hadn't figured out what he was going to say when Katniss decided to speak first. She raised her head just a couple inches, eyes red and puffy. "What's her name? The other girl?"

"Cara," he tells her. The only thing he is sure he _can_ tell her. "Cara Lynnwood.

He must have passed out after that. His house was empty when he came to on the couch and someone - probably Peeta - had patched up the gash on his leg. Someone - probably Peeta - had cleared his cabinet of liquor bottles. Haymitch was pretty confident he hadn't found every hidden stash in the house, but he didn't have the energy to check.

That was where Hazelle Hawthorne found him when she came herself, a bottle in hand. They busted it open together when the first promotional footage began to air on the TV - conveniently focused far more on Katniss's short legacy than that of Addelise Lynnwood's.

It became somewhat of a routine of theirs.

Periodically there would be features on the 37th Hunger Games. The arena had been a dry, dead forest and Addelise had finally won when a foolish tribute set it ablaze by accident and she succeeded in outrunning her fellow tributes. Most had already severely injured themselves in a fight against each other. This, of course, was connected to the 'Girl on Fire' and Cara Lynnwood remained a largely ignored figure in the media.

Haymitch had thought he could never hate the Capitol more than he already did. He had been absolutely wrong. His fantasies of what the world would be when Snow was dead became more colorful. More than that, they helped to (somewhat) wean him off his drink.

Twelve wasn't ready for a revolt. But other places were and looking at Cray's cold, dead eyes, Haymitch thought he could maybe pick up the slack.

His slightly more frequent sobriety was convenient for the training regimen Peeta had outlined for Prim and Rory. But no amount of physical training, snare lessons, or anything else Peeta came up changed them into anything but thirteen year old kids. They were just kids in slightly better shape.

When Reaping Day finally came, Rory and Prim were the last tributes to arrive. Standing alone in the roped off section, back ramrod straight was a young woman in an outdated but elegant dress of light green silk. That dress tickled something in his memory, something he couldn't quite place. But he thought it might fit in well with the rebellion.

She was too healthy looking for District Twelve. Cara Lynnwood didn't look like someone who had spent much time going hungry. She wasn't any taller than Katniss, but the merchant blond waves and the unnameable vitality about her set her far apart.

When they've taken their places on stage, Haymitch glances at Katniss, keeping his bored expression pinned in place.

He wonders if Katniss hates her. Cara stood there in a dress Katniss could never have dreamed of buying Primrose before the games, holding onto the remarkable good luck of being forgotten.

There was no choice but to let Prim and Rory take their places alone. From their view on the stage, their view of the tributes is far improved. Cara does not ignore Prim as he might have expected. Instead, she turns and lays a hand on Prim's shoulder. Something she says somehow is able to make Prim giggle.

That giggle plays on repeat in his head.

He can see the redness of Cara's hands, how worn and calloused they are even from a distance. He isn't quite sure, but her left hand looks almost disfigured. She was taken in by the tanners, he remembers. He didn't know them much, but guessed if she worked in the family business it was not the sort to be kind to her hands.

In eight years, Haymitch was not sure if he had ever seen her. The ability to be forgotten was a skill that Cara Lynnwood has likely been surviving on half her life.

The Reaping began as quickly and moved as quickly as anyone could have expected. Effie stepped out looking pale and shaky, only made more dramatic by her shining gold makeup and wig. Haymitch couldn't say he paid attention to her 'ladies first!' line until her fingers had scrabbled between the two scraps of paper.

Snatching one, Effie's face visibly falls as she reads "Primrose Everdeen. Sister of Katniss Everdeen."

Haymitch knows the camera is flashing between Katniss and Prim and he is already off somewhere far away himself. His mind is already on the strategies they had been working on, the sponsors he would be calling, and the game that was going on behind the arena they were bound for.

He doesn't catch it and it doesn't look like Katniss did either. But Peeta does and he grabs tightly onto Katniss's hand.

In the audience, Hannah Everdeen is stunned and clutching onto Hazelle's arm. Effie is frozen, mouth gaping like a fish.

And so Cara Lynnwood repeats herself once more, hardened expression in place and broadcasted for all of Panem to see.

"I volunteer."


End file.
